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there but you, my brother, could not see them." Chuping together with Chuqi went over again to have another look. Chuping shouted to the sheep to rise and all the stones turned into tens of thousands of sheep. Chuqi said to his brother, "You have now attained perfection in the secrets of the Tao. Can I also learn to do that?" Chuping said, "Only if you are eager to learn the way will you attain perfection." Chuqi then abandoned his wife and children and stayed with his brother to learn the way.
The passage ends with a reference to medicines perfected by Chuping and states that people who have taken this medicine have also managed to become immortals. Chuping, it is also said, eventually changed his name to Chisong Zi and Chuqi his to Lu Ban.
The author of this work, Ge Hong (284-364), was a famous Taoist theorist and writer on Chinese medicine. He appears to be the principal source for traditions about Huang Chuping (although paying him no special attention among the many Taoists whose stories he describes). Other, later accounts, such as the Ming dynasty source Huitu Liexian Quanzhuan (Complete illustrated biographies of the saints), differ little from Ge Hong's version.12
Mt. Luofu's Huang Daxian: Huang Yeren
Huang Yeren was by tradition a disciple of Ge Hong on Mt. Luofu. Ge Hong had retired there, after an active career of service to the state, to pursue immortality through collecting various herbs and attempting to refine cinnabar into a medicine to produce immortality.3 The Huitu Liexian Quanzhuan describes the life of Huang Yeren as follows:
Huang Yeren was a disciple of Ge Hong. When Hong lived in the mountain and made cinnabar Yeren always would follow him. When Hong was about to ascend to heaven he left a pill between the pillar and the stone [supporting stone of his hut?] at Mt. Luofu. Yeren took it and ate it and became an earthbound saint. Even today [this was written in the Ming dynasty...